Pakistan and Afghanistan may be stoking border tensions in a bid to wrest concessions from US benefactors, Western officials have said.
According to Afghan officials, over 760 rockets have been fired into the eastern Afghan border provinces of Konar, Nangahar and Khost in the past six weeks, killing at least 60 people and wounding or displacing hundreds more.
The Western officials said that the attacks portend the dangers of a US military drawdown, particularly along a poorly secured border where militant groups are cooperating to expand their territories, The Washington Post reports.
The border section along Konar and Nangahar provinces has long been among Afghanistan’s least-patrolled, making it fertile ground for insurgents, and US military officials say that they do not have a clear understanding of the violence or the motives behind it.
Earlier, Afghan President Hamid Karzai had said that his troops would not respond to the shelling from Pakistan, which Islamabad says has been minimal and aimed only at fleeing militants.
Afghan officials claimed that shelling from Pakistan continued even after its army chief, General Ashfaq Kayani, assured the Afghan Ambassador to Pakistan in a meeting last week that it would stop.
US military, Pakistani and Afghan representatives had met in Pakistan last week, and officials on all sides were hopeful that a recent improvement in ties between Pakistan and Afghanistan would keep the situation from escalating. ANI
